


we are golden

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Series: tumblr prompts/ask game answers [8]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Acts Like a Cat, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, Multi, Podfic Welcome, Post Reveal, Post-Hawk Moth Defeat, liberty! rose, look im only surprised it took this long, post hawkmoth reveal, runaway kagami tsurugi, running from our problems is TECHNICALLY a solution, the Liberty, theres no way the liberty is seaworthy but we're all making things up here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22142392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: Marinette finds Adrien lounging in the crow’s nest, sprawling in a strip of sunlight in a way that absolutely cannot be safe.  Plagg’s ears are just barely visible in the hood of Adrien’s Kitty Section jacket- ever since Luka had given him that jacket, Marinette hasn’t seen a trace of his old overshirt, so she’s glad Plagg’s made himself so comfortable so quickly.She only hesitates a moment before she joins them.“Hey,” Adrien greets her drowsily, not bothering to get up.  Or move.  “Anyone figure out where Rose and Juleka got to?“
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Kagami Tsurugi
Series: tumblr prompts/ask game answers [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1478756
Comments: 37
Kudos: 530





	we are golden

**Author's Note:**

> for anonymous for a tumblr ask meme: the song [we are golden by mika](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmCKx1-p2HQ) and lukadrigaminette

Marinette finds Adrien lounging in the crow’s nest, sprawling in a strip of sunlight in a way that absolutely cannot be safe. Plagg’s ears are just barely visible in the hood of Adrien’s Kitty Section jacket- ever since Luka had given him that jacket, Marinette hasn’t seen a trace of his old overshirt, so she’s glad Plagg’s made himself so comfortable so quickly. 

She only hesitates a moment before she joins them. 

“Hey,” Adrien greets her drowsily, not bothering to get up. Or move. “Anyone figure out where Rose and Juleka got to?“ 

"They weren’t on the ship,” Marinette says, dryly. Tikki giggles. 

“Oh." Adrien does blink at that, sitting up more only to very deliberately fall into her side. "Whoops." 

Marinette shoves at him, playfully, in a way she wouldn’t have dared a week or two before. "We went back and got them, kitty." 

Adrien makes a complicated face. "I kinda liked the idea of it being just us." 

"Anarka is still here,” Marinette reminds him. “What with the Liberty being her home. You know, like it’s Rose and Juleka’s home? We _really_ had to go back for them." 

Adrien mutters something, reminding her of nothing so much as a grumpy cat.

Marinette gentles her voice. Adrien has a right to be worried, after all. "Don’t worry, no one saw us. Anarka only stopped long enough for them to get on." 

Adrien cracks one eye open, then the other, blinking slowly.

"I’m sure no one saw us,” Marinette repeats, because he seems like he needs it repeated. She notices Tikki burying herself back into her purse, but she doesn’t think anything of it. “Even if they did, they probably don’t realise the Liberty is seaworthy." 

"I am not convinced it is,” Kagami says from just below them, making Marinette jump before she can help herself. Plagg’s ears vanish into Adrien’s jacket at the same time.

She should be _used_ to people sneaking up on her, after all this time partnered with Adrien, but somehow Kagami is still able to take her by surprise. 

It’s so much more frustrating that Kagami clearly isn’t _trying_ to do it. 

“Hey,” Marinette calls down to Kagami, glancing around the crow’s nest and trying to judge if there’s space. 

There’s not, really, but that’s never stopped them before. 

She shrugs out from under Adrien long enough to fold her arms over the edge of the crow’s nest, looking down at Kagami and spotting Luka emerging from below decks. “Hey, come join us!”

Luka raises his eyebrows as he looks up at them. “Pretty sure there’s a rule about there only being one person up there at a time.”

“Pretty sure your mom’s allergic to rules,” Marinette points out, raising her eyebrows right back. “Get up here." 

"I didn’t say it was _Mom’s_ rule." Luka’s already climbing, though, with Kagami right behind him, so Marinette pays that exactly as much attention as it deserves. Which is none.

Adrien tugs her back down against his side, letting out a very quiet purr before the others can reach them.

"Adrien,” Marinette says, very cautiously, and he makes a face at her. He clearly tries to stop purring, but he’s not very successful.

“I still think they know anyway,” he mutters, ducking his head long enough to brush his bangs across her arm. It’s not quite the full-on head bump he’ll do when they’re alone, but it’s verging very close to it. 

Marinette sighs, her heart aching. “We still shouldn’t confirm it." 

"We could consider it." He doesn’t move. "No more Hawkmoth. No one’s gonna let him out of jail anytime soon. Right?”

_Now_ he’s stopped purring.

“ _Adrien_ -” Marinette reaches for him at that, but Kagami and Luka have reached them, so she bites down hard on any of the things she wants to say. She’ll find the time. She’s not sure how, since there’s not a whole lot of privacy on a ship the size of the Liberty to begin with and it’s _really_ not designed for long trips with seven people (and assorted kwami), but she’ll _make_ time somehow. 

Luka drops down to join the two of them right away, jostling them slightly when he can’t quite fit his guitar into the impromptu cuddle pile, but Kagami only stands above them awkwardly. 

Marinette reaches for her, as much as she can with both Adrien and Luka in the way. “It’s warmer down by us, you know." 

"Warmer,” Kagami echoes, and then shakes her head, hard, and takes a seat at the edge of the crow’s nest. Her knees are in contact with Adrien’s shoulder, though, and that might be the best they can hope for yet. 

Adrien has always been too touch-starved to care about decorum, assuming he would have in the first place, and while Luka sometimes has to draw away and take time for himself he’s not terribly shy about it either. Kagami alone of them is still wary of too much physical contact. 

Kagami alone of all of them could potentially face consequences for running off the way they have. 

Marinette told her parents ahead of time (though not far enough ahead of time for them to stop her. They’d been enthusiastic about the trip, though, even if Marinette _had_ left out some pertinent details). Luka’s mom is not exactly in a position to be upset. Adrien’s dad is… not currently able to prevent him. Neither is Nathalie, and while she’s pretty sure he _did_ tell the Gorilla where he was going it’s been a long time now since the Gorilla’s made even a token attempt to stop them. 

Adrien has every reason to take off with them for the summer and no reason to stay. Penny and Jagged helped him find someone to manage the estate once Marinette had figured out a discreet way to ask them, and there’s no one else living at the mansion anymore. Marinette strongly suspects Adrien isn’t planning on going back to it himself. 

She doesn’t think he’ll be able to without being far too aware of Hawkmoth’s lair beneath his feet. 

(After the battle, after they’d gotten somewhere safe and private and detransformed, he’d stayed pressed against her side as he held Plagg and shook for the better part of an hour. She thinks the idea that Hawkmoth could have so easily gotten his hands on his kwami might actually have scared him _more_ than his father _being_ Hawkmoth, and that itself is frightening). 

“We’ve already lost sight of the shore,” Kagami observes, a strange note in her voice that seems divided between hope and fear. Adrien’s running away just as much as she is, but Kagami’s mother is fully capable of trying to find her again. 

Trying. Luka hadn’t offered up the Liberty for no reason. 

“The Liberty’s faster than you’d think,” Luka offers now, getting up only to move to a position where he can bring his guitar around to start letting his fingers play idly over the strings. He hums occasionally, trying on and discarding various songs. “And I heard that, by the way. She’s seaworthy." 

"Is that wordplay?" Kagami asks him, suspicion in her voice as her hand twitches towards the hilt of a sword she doesn’t have. 

She could have brought it. Marinette very much doubts that Anarka would have cared. 

She doesn’t think Kagami would have believed that, though. 

"It’s not wordplay,” Luka assures her, fingers dancing faster as he finds his song. “We’ve taken her out on the ocean before. She may not _look_ like she can handle it, but trust me, we’ll be fine. Might be hard for us to reach anyone else, but we’ll be fine." 

Tikki must have phased through her purse and into her shirt at some point, because Marinette feels her kwami press against her side at that even as the guilt wells up. She really _shouldn’t_ be taking four of the heroes out to sea at once, but Nino knows how to reach them if there really is an emergency. They can still transform. They still have their water power-ups if they really need them. 

What they’d really needed for themselves was a _break_. 

A break, and time for Adrien to try and figure out what he’s going to do now. 

(Marinette knows for a fact that she, Luka, Nino, and even Chloé have all already offered him places to stay. She’d found out after they’d made their plans to go with Anarka for the summer that Kim and Max and Alix had all offered, too. Nathaniel had apologised for not having enough space, but that turned out to be because he already had Marc living with him. The class members who couldn’t give Adrien a place had all tried to help him _find_ one. 

She’d found him crying in the locker room at the end of the day, too overwhelmed by everyone’s unexpected kindness to try and make a decision. In the end it was the idea of taking Kagami with them that decided him on the Liberty). 

Luka’s voice finds the words he wants the same way his hands have found the notes he wants. "Teenage dreams in a teenage circus, running around like a clown on purpose-" 

” _Hey_ ,“ Adrien says, but he tilts his head towards Luka’s playing. Marinette’s sure if he were transformed his ears would be trained on Luka. 

Luka leans back with a faint twitch to his smile and keeps singing. ”-who gives a damn about the family you come from? No givin’ up when you’re young and you want-“ Luka does stumble for a moment, fingers slipping for the barest part of a second. ”-One.“ 

Kagami leans closer to Marinette. "I think he changed something." 

"I think he did,” Marinette agrees, amused, though she doesn’t know the song well enough to know _what_ Luka could have changed. 

“Do you want me to play or not?” Luka asks with a laugh. He clearly tries to still his hands, but he can’t seem to make himself stop playing entirely. 

“Looks like it doesn’t entirely matter if we do or not." Adrien’s voice is drowsy again. He’s been taking a lot of naps since that last battle, but Marinette can’t blame him. She’s not all that sure where he’s been sleeping between now and then, considering how much he’s been trying to avoid the mansion. If he’d actually gone to any of their classmates she thinks she’d have heard something by now. 

She likes knowing where he is a lot better. 

"I can stop anytime,” Luka announces, with the air of someone who’s well aware they’re lying. 

“No, you can’t,” Kagami tells him anyway. 

“No, I can’t,” Luka agrees, laughing. He leans back and looks up at the sky, shading his eyes against the midday sun with one hand. There are clouds about to drift across it, but Luka winces and drops his hand to his guitar again, having looked too soon. “You wouldn’t want me to anyway." 

Adrien stirs, resting one hand over his side in a way Marinette recognises as the nervous tic he’s developed to protect Plagg. His eyes crack open and she realises for the first time that he actually had started to fall asleep again.

He’s been taking a lot of naps. She doesn’t think he’s been staying asleep for very long.

(She still hasn’t asked him about his mother. She doesn’t know _how_ to ask. She’s not sure that she should).

Adrien sits up slightly now, one hand hovering over Plagg and the other reaching for Marinette. "What’s our schedule like, anyway?" 

Luka cocks an eyebrow at him, ignoring the distant sound of Rose and Juleka making their way onto the deck. "Our _what_?" 

The cloud cover vanishes as the breeze picks up, carrying the scent of salt, but the sun that shines through pales in comparison to Adrien’s answering smile.


End file.
